What is the relationship between the economics of nuclear power and the proliferation of nuclear weapons? When security and arms control analysts list what has helped keep nuclear weapons technologies from spreading further than they already have, energy economics are rarely, if ever, mentioned. Yet, large civilian nuclear energy programs bring states quite a way towards developing nuclear weapons and it has been energy economics, more than any other force, which has hampered most states’ plans to develop such projects. read more

Henry Sokolski & Autumn Hanna in the NRO: "Yet More Solyndras"
In an article published in the National Review Online, Sokolski and Hanna argue that although the No More Solyndras Act's purported goal is to stop the siphoning of taxpayer dollars from the program that spawned Solyndra, instead it actually locks taxpayers into providing billions more in high-risk loan guarantees.
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Jun 25, 2012

National Security and U.S. Domestic Uranium Enrichment Requirements
At a time when Congress is weighing making drastic cuts in US defense spending, our government is financially propping up domestic commercial uranium enrichment capacity with direct appropriations and possible loan guarantees. One such case in controversy is the United States Enrichment Corporation’s American Centrifuge Project.
The key arguments made for such spending turns on purported legal and defense requirements, each of which was examined at a Center for Strategic and International Studies panel held last week on uranium enrichment and US national security.
NPEC Executive Director Henry Sokolski challenges these claims and suggests the practicality of relying on existing defense stockpiles and the enrichment services of Louisiana Energy Services in New Mexico. He also discusses the potential proliferation concerns raised by new commercial enrichment technologies, such as SILEX, and explains why federal loan guarantees are unnecessary and undesirable to support the construction of additional US enrichment capacity either for commercial or military purposes.
Audio & Video

Henry Sokolski & Autumn Hanna: The Next Solyndra: Riskier and Radioactive
NPEC executive director Henry Sokolski and Taxpayers for Common Sense's Autumn Hanna draw comparisons between the failed solar company Solyndra and uranium enrichment company USEC. Solyndra, a federal loan guarantee recipient, has already gone bankrupt, and USEC will certainly follow a similar path of wasting taxpayer resources if the government approves a loan guarantee for them.
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The Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), is a 501 (c)3 nonpartisan, nonprofit,
educational organization
founded in 1994 to promote a better understanding of strategic weapons proliferation issues. NPEC educates
policymakers, journalists,
and university professors about proliferation threats and possible new policies and measures to meet them.